Russia launches 100 drones at Ukraine overnight, causing damage in seven regions. Ukraine’s Security Service detains two agents spying for Russia to prepare missile strikes on F-16 jets. Russia oil trade to China, India stalls as sanctions drive up shipping costs, according to Reuters.
Russia launches 100 drones at Ukraine overnight, causing damage in seven regions
The Ukrainian Air Force said on Tuesday that it shot down 65 out of 100 drones launched by Russia overnight. Twenty-eight drones disappeared off radar after likely being disabled by electronic warfare systems. At 9:30 a.m. when the report was released, one more drone was still in the Ukrainian air space and air defenses were at work, the military added.
Russia launched at Ukraine a total of 100 Shahed attack drones and various types of decoy drones overnight from the area of Russia’s Oryol, Bryansk, Kursk, Millerovo, Primorsko-Akhtarsk, and from Cape Chauda in occupied Crimea.
The intercepts took place over the regions of Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kropyvnytskyi, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia and Zhytomyr, the Air Force said.
“The enemy’s 28 decoy drones disappeared off radar (without negative consequences), and two of them flew into Russia and Belarus,” it added.
Overnight Russian air attacks damaged private business facilities, critical infrastructure sites, residential buildings and private homes around Ukraine. Emergency services were at work in the regions of Odesa, Kyiv, Sumy, Poltava, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv following the drone attacks, Ukraine’s Air Force said.
In central Cherkasy region, 72 towns and villages lost power following the attacks, according to Ukrenergo national energy operator.
On Tuesday morning, Ukraine’s air defenses shot down a cruise missile over Odesa region, likely an Iskander-K, the Air Command South (Pivden) said.
Ukraine’s Security Service detains two agents spying for Russia to prepare missile strikes on F-16 jets
Ukraine’s Security Service announced on Tuesday it had broken up a Russian spy ring that was collecting intelligence on Ukrainian aviation infrastructure for future missile strikes on F-16 jets.
The Security Service said in a statement it had arrested two alleged FSB [Russia’s federal security service] agents who were caught “red-handed” photographing a Ukrainian F-16 taking off from a military airfield.
The agents, who were said to be residents of Kremenchuk ages 21 and 22, were allegedly recruited by a female FSB employee whose identity the service had discovered.
“The agents’ task was to collect the exact coordinates of the main and reserve airfields and aviation infrastructure facilities of Ukraine so that the enemy could later launch missile and drone strikes on them. They were supposed to geolocate [the sites] and provide textual and photo reports describing the equipment stationed at each of the installations,” the Security Service said in a statement.
In order to carry out their surveillance, the agents planned to travel to five different regions of Ukraine by public bus. Once near their intended targets, they would then rent housing in order to spy for several days.
Ukraine’s Security Service said it had “exposed both agents at the initial stage of hostile intelligence activity, documented their fruitless visits to several regions and detained them while they were photographing F-16 fighter jets.”
Russia oil trade to China, India stalls as sanctions drive up shipping costs, according to Reuters
Trade for March-loading Russian oil in top buyer Asia has stalled as a wide price gap between buyers and sellers emerged in China after costs for chartering tankers unaffected by U.S. sanctions jumped, according to traders and shipping data, Reuters said.
Washington imposed fresh sanctions on Jan. 10 targeting Russia’s oil supply chain, causing tanker freight rates to soar as some buyers and ports in China and India steered clear of sanctioned ships.
Offers for March Russian ESPO Blend crude exported from the Pacific port of Kozmino jumped to premiums of $3-$5 a barrel to ICE Brent on a delivered ex-ship basis (DES) to China after freight rates for an Aframax tanker on the route surged by several million dollars, three traders familiar with the grade said.
Prior to the January sanctions, robust winter demand and firming prices for rival grades from Iran sent spot premiums for ESPO Blend crude to China rising to close to $2 a barrel, the highest since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022, the aftermath of which had sent discounts to as deep as $6.
In India, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd’s finance chief told Reuters last week that it has not received any new offers for March delivery, as it would ordinarily have, and expects the number of cargoes offered for March to drop from January and December.
Russian crude accounted for 36% of India’s and nearly a fifth of China’s 2024 imports.
The latest sanctions target tankers that carry about 42% of Russia’s seaborne oil exports, primarily to China, according to analytics firm Kpler, although sanctioned tankers are gradually discharging oil in China and India during a waiver period.
The U.S. clarified to India that tankers loaded with Russian oil must discharge by Feb. 27 under the sanctions, India’s oil secretary Pankaj Jain told reporters on Friday. Payments for oil onboard affected ships must be cleared by March 12, he added.
India has emerged as the second-largest buyer of Russian oil after China. Last week, some Indian banks began to block payments for Russian oil following the U.S. oil sanctions on the country, according to European Pravda.
The fee to ship Russian ESPO crude to China has spiked further, with rates now almost five times higher than what they were prior to US sanctions on Moscow’s oil industry earlier this month, according to traders, Bloomberg said.